Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Doctors Can Think For Themselves

Something I found to be absolutely true, in my experience, and that of the many, many other MDs I know:

The billions that drug companies spend on personal visits to promote new drugs and hand out free samples to doctors have little effect on how doctors prescribe drugs, according to a study published on Wednesday.

Not only that, but I have never written a prescription just because the patient asked for it, nor do I know any MD who does that. [Granted, Ob/Gyns are not on the frontlines of colds and flu, but I've had my share of inappropriate pain meds requests.]

3 Comments:

Ema, what is the rate of increase in patients asking for particular drugs that they see on tv commercials? I hate those commercials, mostly because the way they're worded, just about everyone would fit the profile to use the drug of choice.

It depends on the drug, and I'm not sure what the specific rates of increases are. I recall a Kaiser* study that found ~30% of pts who see an ad, talk to their MD about it, and 12-25% of this group specifically ask to be precribed a drug they saw advertised.

Here are two examples I found. From Sept. 1998, when DTCs for Detrol (a drug for urinary incontinence) started, to Sept. 1999 doctor visits requesting Detrol rose from 12% to 18%. For Levitra (for impotence): from October to November 2003 patient requests for Levitra grew 51% (article)

*Kaiser Family Foundation Understanding the Effects of Direct-to-Consumer Prescription DrugAdvertising, November 2001